Stuckness Prompts - part 2

And here's the other half of the '8 Days a Week' which I began last week; see the explanation there:

• Your character takes a dislike to someone.
• Dinner last night.
• Your character tells a lie.
• Write into your created world something that happened in your own life this week.
• Your character chooses something that reveals something new about himself/herself.
• Your character assesses how she/he looks.

Yes, I know I said the other half. So there should only be four prompts -- consider this your lucky day: a bonus!

This week my deadline pressure is an essay for the Jung course I am taking; working title, 'Jung and the Hope of Art'.

Stuckness Prompts

Lo and behold, following my blog appeal late last week, Moira reached me! [hi, Moira] So I was able to supply her the promised Stuckness Prompts from the 26 Nov blog entry. Still doing penance for having missed those comments, I continue with stuckness this week, so nobody has to ask -- here it is in the blog.

I created '8 Days a Week' for my class who were deep into their own pieces. The writers were in completely individual worlds and stages of their work in hand, and by the 'rules' of novel-in-a-month method should have been writing every day. They should have overcome the blank page freeze syndrome for themselves, as part of the experience, but I softened and provided this emergency escape. The report back from the writers proved this a worthy invention.

It is an envelope for each writer containing 8 slips of paper -- each envelope bearing the student-writer's name. Each slip has a starting phrase or situation, very simple and sketchy to allow for the variables in their work -- I printed out the sheet of them and cut into slips. Each writer got the same slips... but might have drawn them out in any order, and NOT every day. Instructions: to be used Only for Stuckness.

• The phone rings.
  (If yours is a period world, then There’s a banging at the door.)
• Your character is bothered by a dream he/she had last night.
• Everytime it rained she…
  (Everytime it rains he…)
• Something reminds your character of her/his mother.

Cheat! I will supply the other four next week. Because right now I have to continue my task as editor of the British Haiku Society quarterly newsletter, the brief. Eeeek, on deadline.

Desperately seeking nellie & moira & bryan

Three kind blog-readers posted comments back in January, and I have only now seen them! I thought I'd taken care of my change to new pc, new server, new email address for my blog, but seems it didn't penetrate all the layers.

So I never got the alert and didn't look back to see the comments. Very sorry!! Bryan said re 11 December he's a Nanowrimo veteran and he likes a teacher sharing the journey...

But especially nellie and moira, in January, commented on Writing Students Demand Homework (26 Nov 2008 blog) and asked for the Homework sheet choices and Stuckness prompts I offered.

But now I reveal my total pooterishness -- I cannot figure out how to reach them. So I hope you are looking at this dear bloggees (is that a word?). For them, and for anyone else, the best way to reach me, so that I can reach back to you, is to go direct to my Matrix book Paxton Publishing website, from where there are direct email routes to me. Also, I suppose, by asking you to go to this trouble it shows that you really really do want to get in touch. Or else you can instruct me on blogspot procedurals! Humble apologies.